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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25658998">liars, both of us</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/benwvatt/pseuds/benwvatt'>benwvatt</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Gilmore Girls</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Fix-It, Pining, logan loves rory a lot, odette is a lesbian she's super cool</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:55:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,211</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25658998</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/benwvatt/pseuds/benwvatt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Listen, I know your heart was broken after what happened with Rory, but there’s still a world waiting for you out there, why would you <span class="u">do</span> this when you don’t love Odette at all-”</i>
</p><p>  <i>“Because,” Logan says, smirking, “She doesn’t love me either. We’re actors, and the contract’s up in a year or so.”</i></p><p>Fix-it fic set during AYITL! Odette and Logan are engaged, yes, but it's all out of convenience to please their parents. They'll play the part, they'll make up arguments about France and London, and they plan to break up by the year's end. Odette can come out to her parents, and Logan can fly away, free.</p><p>And then, a few weeks after he gets engaged, Logan sees Rory again. Timing was never their strong suit.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Rory Gilmore/Logan Huntzberger</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. one</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Logan has never been in love with Odette. They kiss in public, under mistletoe, and her lips are colder than the windows, frosted shut. His mother’s grin spreads widely across her spray-tanned cheeks. He’ll hold Odette’s hand, clenching it tighter than he’d ever find acceptable, and she squeezes back through her gloves (yeah, <i>gloves.</i> Tiny powder-blue things with stitches so small, he wonders how they hold anything together. Ugh, the French.)</p><p>Logan has never wanted Odette, has never slept with Odette, has barely even touched her. His sister picks up on their unwanted cues: the grazes that Odette brushes off sometimes. The way she doesn’t finish his sentences, and she doesn’t seem interested in learning.</p><p>Honor grabs Logan by the collar when they’re in a quiet room, asking why the <i>hell</i> he’s engaged to a woman he can’t even kiss beneath the mistletoe. She’s begging, even. “Listen, I know your heart was broken after what happened with Rory, but you don’t need to settle, there’s still a world waiting for you out there, why would you <i>do</i> this when you don’t love Odette at all-”</p><p>The look in his eyes is half-remorseful, and Honor sees her brother’s spirit sparking back to life in that moment. She lets his collar go, and he smooths out the crisp fabric of his shirt.</p><p>“Because,” Logan says, a smirk replacing his blank expression, “She doesn’t love me either. We’re actors, and the contract’s up in a year or so.”</p>
<hr/><p>Odette’s father has always taught her a couple things: rule one, never mix business with personal matters unless you want a meltdown somewhere down the line; and rule two, a bluff is only as good as your poker face. He’s always provided for her silk dresses and international schools, and she’s grateful, but it’s all about rule one for him. Give your daughter a good education, pass down your business to your precious heir, and watch the investment pay for itself.</p><p>Her father’s gestures of love are stiff and unconcerning, as if he never learned how to say anything real. He knows checkbooks and stock markets like the back of his hand, and he’s got English and French under his belt, but sentiment? He’s not fluent. He can barely speak sentiment without stumbling over his words and hiding in his office, behind the stacks of magazines he promises he’ll read but never does.</p><p>Sometimes, an “I’m proud of you” would go a really long way.</p><p>Odette’s father is a withdrawn man. He keeps to himself, and he passed his comfort zone down to his daughter. So her father stays in his office night after night, burning the candle at both ends, and Odette … well, she’s got her own hiding places.</p><p>Odette stays in her room most of the time, writing and throwing away copies of a speech she can’t bear to give.</p><p>
  <i>Yeah, I’m a lesbian. Yep, knew it since I was about 16. Yes, I’m sure. No, I don’t need to meet “the right boy.” There is no right boy, Dad. That’s kind of the point.</i>
</p><p>And she chuckles to herself when she’s writing that last sentence, but a tear still slips down the bridge of her nose as she imagines the day she’ll read it aloud.</p><p>Odette flushes her coming-out essays down the drain because she can’t bear to disappoint her mother and father. She wants the freedom so badly. Just a couple words need to fall out of her mouth, just one push over the edge of constant caution, and her parents will know everything.</p><p>But she bides her time carefully, because she’s following rule one. Never, ever mix business with your personal life, and the risk of getting cut off by her parents falls right into that Venn diagram. Her father, in a kind and terrible gesture, pays her credit card bills every month. He deposits money in her trust fund, a nest egg for the future. She knows she’s too old to rely on his support, but it’s just so convenient. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you. And if that hand magically made your student debt disappear and financed your first-class tickets to Amsterdam and Rome, you might do anything to stay in its good graces.</p><p>So Odette is thirty-two, and she’s hiding her crush on Keira Knightley rather poorly, by saying she loves “literature” enough to watch Pride and Prejudice sixteen times. Sue her, the storyline’s really beautiful, and Elizabeth Bennet has this <i>smile</i> in the third scene that could make you swoon. She’s excused her dislike of dating in the past by saying she wants to focus on her education, or her mental health, or her friends. No clue if her parents believe her.</p><p>Odette listens to Tegan and Sara late at night, headphones plugged in, and she smiles gently at rainbow flags waving in the breeze. She keeps a blog about her life under a pen name. She reads about gay history, first in Wikipedia articles and then, bolder, in books. Magazines. Short stories. Poems about feelings that she’s only dreamed of.</p><p>And she starts to grow comfortable with the words in her mouth: <i>I’m a lesbian, and I love myself for it, and I’m proud. I can breathe lighter than I have for years.</i></p><p>Odette starts listening to rule number two. Your bluff is only as good as your poker face, after all, and she doesn’t care about winning the game anymore. Odette wants to lay her cards on the table and walk out of the room. No more bets, no more rounds.</p><p>Odette’s coming out speeches start growing longer. She cracks jokes and leaves notes in the margins; she doodles peace signs and signs them with ease, the ink flooding out of her pen.</p><p>Odette’s planning on breaking rule number one, of course, when her father informs her that they’ve found a nice boy for her to marry.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. two</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <i>Logan insists it’s not about Rory, and he believes it out of sheer convenience.</i>
</p><p>Logan meets Odette, but she's not the girl he spends his night thinking about.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Odette’s parents want her to <span class="u">marry</span> Logan Huntzberger. She doesn’t know whether to be more offended that they’ve decided she’ll follow their plan to the letter, like this is some Victorian drama instead of the twenty-first century, or that they’ve missed the glaring clues she’s been dropping about coming out. How many times does she need to blast Hayley Kiyoko from her room before they connect the dots?</p><p>Her father shuts down her pleas of “I don’t even know him!” and “I’m too young” with excuses of his own, and Odette’s argument folds like a misaligned house of cards. Her heart sinks. There go the two best protests in her arsenal, and now it’s running a little bare.</p><p>“I know Logan’s father rather well, and, of course, we got to talking-”</p><p>“About <i>this</i>? You couldn’t have had small talk about golf clubs and the latest beluga caviar on the market?”</p><p>Her father waves her comment off, the sneer on his face thinly veiled. “Mitchum Huntzberger is a fine businessman, just like his son, and he owns practically half the newspapers in the states. He’s expanding his capital by looking at more publishing companies, so that’s how we met. Anyways, I’m sure you’ll like Logan, all the girls do-”</p><p><i>Not this one,</i> Odette thinks, biting back the venom.</p><p>“Well, you said you’ve been meaning to date, now that you’ve graduated with your master’s!”</p><p>
  <i>You decided to marry me off to a complete stranger because I made an offhand remark about downloading Bumble?</i>
</p><p>“Now, darling, the plan’s not finalized yet. You should just meet him, get to know him, see if he’s your type! Think about how much pressure this will relieve if he turns out to be a good match.”</p><p>She shakes her head, pulling back.</p><p>“Besides, you’re in your thirties and you’ve never had a serious relationship. I can barely remember your last boyfriend, practically four years ago.” Her father tosses out the bait to see if she’ll bite. “We don’t want people to get the wrong ideas.”</p><p>She walks away, knuckles white as she balls up her hands inside the sleeves of her cardigan. Wrong ideas? Her father’s playing with fire now.</p><p>“Odette,” he says all sing-songy, the way he’d announced that their family was moving to Tokyo for two years. “If you go through with it, I’ll give you seed money for that company you want to start.”</p><p>Her jaw clenches, but she turns back all the same. “You can’t bribe me to marry your business partner’s son, I’ll have you know,” she says, spitting the words. “But  … will you give me a little if I agree to meet him? Just <span class="u">meet</span> him, nothing more.”</p><p>Odette half-expects her father to scribble down a number on a receipt and pass it across the table, but he nods quickly. He really must be desperate, she thinks, and she mumbles a ‘yes’ into the stuffy air before slipping out of the room.</p><p>Odette decides to play King Princess very, very loudly from her speakers for the next month.</p>
<hr/><p>When Logan first meets Odette, the first thing that strikes him is the thinness of her face. He feels like he’s met a very elegant, very in-the-mood-to-mope blonde, or perhaps she merely walked out of a painting. Logan pushes away the lingering haunt of “hey, y’know, in Stars Hollow, they did a Festival of Living Art once, and I <i>always</i> wanted to dress up as the Girl with a Pearl Earring.” (He can still see the glee in her eyes as she spoke.)</p><p>That’s a Rory thing, put into a bag and shipped away once he gave back her Taylor Swift CDs and dog-eared copy of Three Musketeers. He can’t dwell on it anymore. She’s gone, and the once-picturesque idea of him and her, of a marriage found somewhere between white wicker fences and city lights-</p><p>That’s gone too.</p><p>So he meets Odette, long face and all. Logan shakes her hand, brings her a drink, chats her up all evening. Little parcels of ‘where’d you grow up?’ and ‘that’s hilarious!’ litter their conversation, and it’s as comfortable as his Midas-touch life ever gets.</p><p>Odette sewed her own dress for the evening, Logan learns. It’s a mango-yellow number that hangs off one shoulder, bright against her pale skin, and she talks his ear off about New York fashion week. Logan segues into the prep schools in Brooklyn and the Bronx that he’d attended (rather briefly, before the great Cadillac Incident of 2001 led to his dismissal.)</p><p>She laughs, hiding her smile with a slender hand. “Incident? Care to elaborate?”</p><p>“The less said about that, the better.” He shrugs, and the ice in his glass clinks before she offers to refresh it.</p><p>She’s … nice. Bubbly, with the same manufactured enthusiasm he’s seen in the majority of Honor’s friends. Logan can’t expect to know her well after an arm’s-length encounter, but Odette’s likeable, at the very least. She checks off the boxes in his father’s head: got a degree from the Sorbonne, wears four-inch heels, smiles more often than she talks, has a trust fund buried away like a jewelry box in an attic.</p><p>Logan tries not to think about his own checkboxes. What <i>he</i> wants from a wife, from a partner. Logan has a dynastic plan to live up to, his father reminds him, and his feelings don’t matter anymore. Not after all the mistakes Logan’s made. It’s better this way, Mitchum insists, to control the course of Logan’s life before he crashes and burns.</p><p>So, at the end of the night, Logan pulls away. She does the same, thankfully, and he’s never been happier that a girl didn’t respond to his inadvertent charm. Logan tells himself that it’s not a Rory thing, he’s just tipsy and gun-shy, and he knows from experience that three-hundred-dollar lipstick leaves a bad aftertaste. </p><p>He can’t bring himself to flirt with anyone else, and hasn’t been able for ages now. Not since he called Rory a few months ago, helping her sift through a fifty-page contract before the year’s end, and he felt more alive while discussing Appendix C than he has anywhere else. He’d laughed at her righteous anger over a typo 一 “who in their right mind would mix up their, there, and they’re?!” 一 and it’d felt so natural, it ached.</p><p>On the phone, in some hiding place that wasn’t Connecticut and wasn’t London and wasn’t anywhere in between, he thrived. He’d missed the sound of her voice.</p><p>Logan insists it’s not about Rory, and he believes it out of sheer convenience.</p><p>So Odette waves goodbye, attempting a handshake that doesn’t go as planned. It’s a little awkward, but they laugh it off before her driver honks twice.</p><p>“Um, safe travels!” Logan calls over the noise.</p><p>“You too! It was nice meeting you.”</p><p>Odette slips into her car with ease, so glad he didn’t try to kiss her. She hasn’t kissed a boy in years.</p>
<hr/><p>Logan stares out the window on the way home. His suit jacket feels stiff, heavy on his shoulders, and he shoves it off and kicks it against the floormat of the car. His head’s spinning; he winces at that. Logan doesn’t have the same tolerance he had in his glory days, and he tries to focus on the moon, perpetually ahead of the path, instead of the road he’s left behind.</p><p>It occurs to him, briefly and obnoxiously, that his father carefully avoided the elephant in the room when orchestrating the great Huntzberger-Despres meeting.</p><p>Of all the girls Logan’s met, only Rory checked off every single one of his boxes.</p><p>Coffee-drinker. Listens to way too much NPR (like, she used to predict which advertisements were coming up.) Night owl. Made him laugh like he’d never be able to stop. Doesn’t care about which fork is for salad and which is for dessert. Bad at baking. Unathletic in every sense of the word. Gawky, short, cute. Actually adores getting on planes at a moment’s notice and flying halfway around the world.</p><p>When Logan gets home and collapses into bed, the last thought he has is that he misses hearing NPR in the mornings.</p>
<hr/><p>Rory Gilmore is a patient person. If she isn’t, at least she’s both impatient and good at playing along with the rules. Over the last decade, she’s fought tooth and nail for every bit of success that’s come her way. Her career has carried and pushed and dragged her around the world, into intricate nooks and crannies of life that no one ever gave a second glance. And it’s been heartbreaking, seeing traumas she can’t imagine. It’s been exhilarating, rushing to translate the truth before it slips out from under her fingers. It’s the safest danger she’s ever come across. She knows she’s created something good.</p><p>Rory Gilmore is proud of every choice she’s made since graduating from Yale, a cold and misty morning years ago.</p><p>So why can’t she fall asleep at night?</p><p>Rory knows there’s no such thing as “having it all.” Life’s about making sacrifices and honoring them, even if you might not like what you end up with. But as much as she adores the independent streak running through her bloodline, the one that’s pushed her to realize dreams she used to doubt 一 there’s an uneasiness in the pit of her stomach.</p><p>Something’s off.</p><p>So Rory takes a little time off of work, calling it a sabbatical like she’s going to meditate and find her inner zen or something. She isn’t very keen on repeating the great Yale Dropout Crisis of 2005, and her vacation days at the New Yorker are going to expire anyways. Rory tries it all: dancing around her apartment in her underwear, learning a new language, taking swimming classes, riding the Ferris wheel with a stranger next to her, origami YouTube tutorials, speed dating, calligraphy, goat yoga (she thought it might help with zen and all, except the baby goats were too cute and she spent half the class laughing and taking pictures for her mom.) She wants <i>something</i> to spice up her life.</p><p>Rory thinks it might be working? Except she nearly pulls a muscle while dancing. Her hair smells like chlorine from the public pool. Her phone’s nearly out of storage from all the goat videos she’s taken (worth it) and it turns out that riding Ferris wheels is awkward instead of romantic.</p><p>Rory writes in her new gratitude journal and bakes cinnamon rolls twenty-six times until she’s perfected them; she watches Funny Face and learns all sorts of obscure history trivia; she pieces together a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle of a Monet painting and delights in crushing it in her bare hands when she’s done. She goes online shopping and window shopping, and tries a bar crawl with her friends in the city, and she’s starting to think about buying a record player when her vacation time runs out.</p><p>No zen in sight. Just a fridge full of cinnamon rolls, a bunch of selfies she’s taken with goats, and a long story about how she learned the butterfly stroke. She feels somewhat better, but there’s still this quiet loneliness eating away at her.</p><p>Rory wants more than this headfirst, eyes-closed life, and she doesn’t know how to find that. She’s tired of trying.</p><p>She goes back to the New Yorker with a false air of calmness, and writes an article about inner peace and self-care that includes not one, not two, but five quotes from her gratitude journal. Maybe it’s dumb luck, but her writing performs well, and her boss publishes it in their next issue. <i>Above</i> the fold.</p><p>Two weeks later, Logan texts her a photo of a newspaper in a room that looks like his office. Her name’s on the byline, capital letters etched out in that black-grey ink, and he’s highlighted a sarcastic quote about goat yoga on the page.</p><p><i>[messages, 6:03 pm]</i><br/>
<b>logan:</b> I always knew you were good at this, Gilmore</p><p>There’s a pause, ellipses appearing in a little cloud on her phone, and then-</p><p>
  <i>[messages, 6:04 pm]</i>
</p><p><b>logan:</b> by the way, did you actually bake that many batches of cinnamon rolls??<br/>
<b>logan:</b> we both know how badly it went when you tried to make cupcakes<br/>
<b>logan:</b> you can lie to the readers, but you can’t lie to me</p><p>It’s the first time he’s texted her in months. Rory stares at the words on the screen, not quite sure they’re real, and she clicks the screen off as she clutches her phone. Taking a breath, a blush rises, slow, in her cheeks.</p><p>He saw it.</p><p>He saw it and he’s proud of her.</p><p>Rory’s suddenly glad her article’s already published and finalized, because this recent little development would have to inspire a rewrite. Something-something about inner zen and finding the right person to ride the Ferris wheel with (if she’s being sappy), and another two paragraphs on the difference between quiet and peace.</p><p>She wonders how quickly is too quick to text back.</p><p>Because the dancing in her underwear, and the swim classes, and the thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle? That was quiet.</p><p>And this feeling right here, the <i>will-he-won’t-he</i> push and pull that reminds her of juvenalia and long-since-abandoned hope?</p><p>This is the closest she’s been to peace since she started fighting tooth and nail for her success.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>thank you for reading!! It's currently finals week for me, but I couldn't help but write another chapter because I love this AU too much. Comments and kudos are always amazing.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thank you for reading!!! I really wanted to read a fix-it fic for AYITL, and I ended up writing this yesterday. comments and kudos are always appreciated :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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